There is a staggering number of lamp designs available in the market today, each of them trying to address a particular use case or setting. Some try to cast their nets wide, but it’s sometimes difficult to have a “one size fits all” solution that doesn’t make too many compromises in return. Some people need a concentrated beam of light, while others prefer a more scattered glow. While it’s trivial to change a lamp’s intensity, changing its spread is a little trickier to pull off with traditional designs. This concept design tries to diverge from well-trodden paths to come up with a solution that could satisfy most, if not all, needs, and it ends up having a unique, eye-catching design that, oddly enough, also looks like an eyeball.
Designer: Julian Topor
Lamps serve different purposes depending on where they’re placed and how they emit their light. Ceiling and pendant lights serve to illuminate an entire space, while wall lamps aim to enhance the ambiance. Table lamps often give a more limited amount of light in their surroundings, while most desk lamps focus the light in a specific direction. Solus is a desk lamp design that tries to check off most of those boxes, at least without leaving your desk, and it uses planets revolving around the sun as inspiration.
In this case, what orbits around a ball of light isn’t a planet but four curved plates that can cover parts of a sphere that houses the bulb. These covers can move independently of each other, so you can cover parts of the sphere only while leaving other sections exposed, even if those parts aren’t adjacent to each other. You can expose at most three-fourths of the sphere, for example, or show only a quarter of the ball, making it look eerily like an eye.
With this rather unusual design, you can have precise control of how the light is distributed around the area. It can be spread far and wide by uncovering the majority of the upper half of the sphere, or it can be directed at a single location by covering everything but the direction you want. You can even illuminate different directions by leaving opposite sides open. Of course, the lamp’s brightness can also be controlled, this time with a ring slider on the base of the lamp.
Although the source of its inspiration isn’t immediately obvious, Solus’ unusual design, not to mention its color options, makes it a fun yet multi-functional lighting solution for almost any table or desk motif you have going. It might not take the role of a ceiling or wall lamp, but its flexible configuration definitely makes it worth more than a few single-purpose lamps. Plus, its odd and eerie design is a great eye-catching piece, pardon the pun, that’s sure to get friends and guests talking or even envying your latest acquisition.
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